18 Responses to “IS: Infinite Stratos 2 – 12 [END]”

I really did try to watch the first season. I bailed at the middle of episode two. Why did I follow this in the second season? Why?

IS is a convoluted mess. The tech is sports equipment isn’t military tech but it’s sports equipment but it is military tech. I can understand how this is a key element to the background, but it never quite stuck me as being anything more than a reason to have mechs that do cool stuff. Not a bad reason, but it always felt disjointed.

And the harem element was just so disjointed and flaccid as to not appeal. They had such great VA talent that just had to phone it in. I could hear Chiwa Saito’s boredom. You cannot make a series that makes me hear her boredom.

I think the issue is that IS has a couple structural flaws, but overall the biggest problem is with the writing. The novels are pretty much just as bad as the anime is, and it’s a shame because there are some things that have a lot of appeal with the show. The first season’s IS battles were MUCH better than the second season’s (they’re very similar to Busou Shinki, another 8-bit series). And there was a lot more of it, even if it was “Hah, Ichika, I’m the new girl and I have to fight you now!” There was just much more actual plot, things like Laura’s introduction and first fight where her IS started mutating around her.

Unfortunately, this second series just devolved into too much girl focus. That’s fine for a few episodes, but it didn’t work every episode, where they abandoned the plot for the most part, and just focused on harem fights. The best episodes of this series were the ones where the harem stuff went away, and it treated everyone just as a girl learning to pilot an IS, like Kanzashi’s episodes. And Tatenashi was a good character, but there just isn’t room for her the way they presented it. Ichika’s harem is almost as big as Rito’s , but they don’t show all of Rito’s harem every episode (for a good reason).

For everyone, if you’re going to make a choice between watching IS 2 and Infinite Stratos first series, watch the first series. But if you want shows with good harem and fighting and ecchi, you’re better off with Sekirei or To-Love-Ru: Darkness.

To-Love-Ru is the bomb in all thing harem. It never fails to entertain. Yep it is down to writing. I’ve been reading a bunch of LN’s these past couple of months, mostly the Index stuff. But they do read like the pulps of the days of yore. IOW, sensationalist and rather discard-able. Really J.C. Staff should be saluted for making a coherent story out of Index.

I really recommend the High School DxD LN’s. Reading them really points up what great adaptations the two anime series have been. It’s not great writing from a literary standpoint, but it’s very good writing as far as matching up to how it would be presented in the anime.

Regardless abt Index writing, Kamachi.exe talents in writing comedies based on trolling, playing with tropes and fourth wall breaking are certainly top notch. “The Circumstances Leading to Waltraute’s Marriage” had ROFLMAO the whole way.

I’d also recommend his other series Heavy Object and A Simple Survey too. I enjoyed reading them at the very least.

It’ll be interesting whether IS 2 can keep up its huge sales from the first volume. Everyone knew that the first episode was going to be a BD special, and it was certainly worth it, with the extended version being much much better. But the rest of the discs don’t have that, afaik, so I don’t know how the sales will go.

Of course, *everything* from Fall has terrible sales so far, so it’s not going to be hard for IS 2 to have best sales this season. The only things that are projected to sell anything are IS2, Non Non Biyori, Arpeggio of Blue Steel, and Yowamushi Pedal.

Even an all action episode wasn’t able to save this show from being a miserable, unpleasant trainwreck. More disappointing is that an interesting story piece which revolved around Phantom Task was wasted. We still know next to nothing about them, only Madoka’s vague reasoning for wanting to kill Chifuyu. Apparently, it isn’t over because there’s an OVA on its way.

Just thought I would wish you all a happy New Year, and I would also like to say that ‘Highway’, I am glad to see someone recommending “Sekirei” to others; as it has been a long time since I have seen anyone recomend it to people. It makes me happy to else who liked the series (although I really wish that they would hurry up and finish the manga already, and maybe even make another season of the anime) enough to be able recommend it to others. (^-^)

Sekirei was good enough to get me really interested in anime. It’s the series I credit with piquing my interest enough to start looking online for it, and watching subtitles. So it will always be a bit special for me. And even without those rose-colored glasses, I think it’s a pretty darn good harem / fighting show. It hits a sweet spot of action, humor, romance, rivalry, and consequence that’s rare. And while it’s not the best voice work there’s ever been, the group of Saori Hayami, Aya Endou, Marina Inoue, Yukana, Romi Paku, Shizuka Itou, and Sayaka Oohara is almost unmatched (that’s not even counting Kana Hanazawa, because Kuu is all baby-voice).

Not bad looking but it might be sold in an inopportune time, off season, if you will. Don’t you think it would’ve had more appeal if it were to be sold during the time Infinite Stratos 2 was airing? That would have brought in more hype and motivation.

Sales are a different kettle of fish. Plus, you want to maximize your store presence. So you have something like this come out more during the time the BD’s are out. And you make most of them preorders so that 1) you know how many to produce and 2) the supply after that is limited. That keeps the value higher for people who own them because if a new person finds the series, or missed the sale, they pretty much have to get second-hand or speculative stock.